Assessment of Aquatic Ecosystem Health of the Wutong River Based on Benthic Diatoms

Hao Xue,Binghui Zheng,Peixuan Cheng,Fansheng Meng,Yeyao Wang,Lingsong Zhang

doi:10.3390/w11040727

Abstract

The community structure of benthic diatoms and water environmental characteristics were extensively investigated to assess the aquatic ecosystem health of the Wutong River (Heilongjiang Province, China). Several diatom indices were calculated, and a benthic diatom index based on biotic integrity (BD-IBI) was developed. Principal component analysis (PCA), Spearman correlation analysis (CA), cluster analysis, redundancy analysis (RDA), and the box plot analysis were used to analyze the benthic diatom communities, assess the river ecosystem health, and compare the applicability of different indexes. The results indicated that Gomphonema parvulum and other tolerant species were the dominant species. Meanwhile, most sites were in “poor” or “very poor” condition according to the diatom indexes evaluation, indicating that the river has been disturbed by human activities. The sampling sites of the Wutong River were divided into three groups based on different pollution levels. The derived BD-IBI included four individual metrics of different aspects, showed strong distinguishability for three grouping and robust correlation with environmental variables. Of all the indexes selected, IBI performed the best, followed by the species-level diatom indexes and the genus-level diatom indexes.

Highlights

Human disturbance has severely affected the health of river ecosystems, which leads to the significant degradation of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity [1]
As an important part of aquatic resources and river ecosystems, benthic diatoms are a good indicator of water quality changes [9] and human disturbance activities [10]
In the Wutong River, a total of 122 diatom species belonging to 29 genera were recorded in 13 diatom samples collected

Summary

Introduction

Human disturbance has severely affected the health of river ecosystems, which leads to the significant degradation of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity [1]. There are many approaches for assessing the health of freshwater systems that use biological communities, such as fish, macrophytes, macroinvertebrates, and algae [3,4,5]. Algae is considered to be more efficient than other biological communities as it has a shorter generation time than fish and macroinvertebrates and responds rapidly to environmental changes [6,7,8]. As an important part of aquatic resources and river ecosystems, benthic diatoms are a good indicator of water quality changes [9] and human disturbance activities [10]. Et al [11] reported

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Conclusion